by Ko Un
Gunfire ran out in a gully
beneath a steep hillside.
Then
all was quiet.
Ten years later came the April Revolution.
On the day a cenotaph was to be erected
the families of the victims
went en masse to Park Yeong-bo’s house.
They dragged him a couple of miles
and made him stand before the graves.
He ran away.
People hurled stones furiously.
He fell as he fled.
One year later came the military coup of May 1961.
People were arrested
for the murder of Park Yeong-bo.
The CheongYa Operation is still on. It’s lasted a long time.
A Baby in the 4 January Retreat
On 31 December 1951
President Syngman Rhee reluctantly ordered the citizens of Seoul to evacuate.
The Chinese human wave strategy
was once again threatening Seoul.
General Ridgeway, commanding the American forces,
ordered his men to retreat to the south of the Han River.
On 3 January 1951 –
not much of a new year –
the government hurriedly left.
Three hundred thousand Seoul citizens
had to cross the frozen Han River
to head farther
and farther south.
In Waryong-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul,
one newborn,
the youngest child of the owner of the Seonil Printing Company,
a baby not yet entered in the family register
so still nameless,
was just called,
Dear,
My dear,
My weevil, little rice weevil.
It crossed the Han River ice
on its mother’s back
So it began life.
They were lucky. At Suwon they got a ride on a freight train.
A Grandmother
Su-dong’s grandmother
who lived below Jinnamgwan Hall in Yeosu, South Jeolla province,
knew exactly how many roundworms
her little grandson Su-dong had in his stomach.
When I’m with my grandson
I can see the camellias on Odong Island;
more than that, I can even see
the camellias on Geomun Island over the sea.
Yeong-u, a refugee child,
was extremely envious of Su-dong.
Ah, if only I had such a clairvoyant grandmother!
The siren of the boat heading for Tong-yeong came echoing.
Or maybe it was the boat from Tong-yeong?
Age of Spies
If you did not provide a traveller with a place to sleep,
your family was disgraced.
If you offered cold food
to a traveller,
several generations of your family were disgraced.
Even sixty years ago,
even fifty years ago,
even in days when the nation was stolen from us,
even in wartime,
traces of that old hospitality remained.
Whenever you set off
carrying only a staff and a change of clothes,
each village you passed through
took warm-hearted care of you,
your food and lodging.
If you stayed somewhere for three days, then fell sick,
they’d even provide you with medicine.
Long ago, when Hamel and his companions,
Dutch survivors of shipwreck,
were being escorted from Jeju Island to Seoul
by way of Jeolla Province,
they received a warmer welcome
than they had ever received
in any Christian country in the world.
It was the hospitality given
when humans meet other human beings.
They were moved to say: on our weary journey
the generous hearts of Joseon’s people
are incomparable with those of other lands
Some centuries later,
after the war,
that hospitality vanished.
Not only were visitors treated coldly;
people began to report them to the police.
A suspicious person is a spy.
A traveller is a spy.
Anyone loitering at the seaside early in the morning,
anyone who laughs for no reason
at the sight of someone, anyone, all are spies.
Report them.
Report them and earn a reward that will change your luck.
In this country today we have no more wandering travellers.
Two Kilos of Pork
In 1926, Korea’s Provisional Government
was being pursued all the time,
starving
as it fled along the shores of the Yangtze River.
Kim Gu, the acting premier,
had abolished things like birthdays long ago.
He was stern with himself:
How can people fighting to regain their nation
celebrate a birthday?
However, Na Seok-ju found out when Kim Gu’s birthday was,
pawned his clothes
and bought two kilos of pork.
Everyone cheered up.
With that meat, they were spared for once
their usual poor breakfast.
Kim Gu scolded them:
This will not do.
This will not do.
The Independence Movement knows no birthdays.
Na Seok-ju soon after threw a bomb
that scared the Japanese out of their wits.
He sacrificed himself.
He became a man with no birthday forever.
Manguri Cemetery
The war did not spare even public cemeteries.
The public cemetery in Manguri,
was the underworld of Seoul.
On September 30, 1950,
even that site
became a battlefield.
While six thousand graves lay there,
UN soldiers
and communist soldiers
showered bullets
between the graves,
charged at each other,
stabbed one another with bayonets.
Bodies of fallen soldiers
lay scattered here and there
among the graves.
Bodies of black soldiers,
white soldiers,
bodies of communist soldiers,
were scattered all over the unmown grass.
Seventy-five minutes of deadly battle,
seventy-three dead bodies on both sides:
that was all.
Manguri Cemetery went back to being a cemetery.
3 October 1950
Seoul belonged to the enemy for three months
under the rule of the North Korean People’s Republic.
The American air force’s bombing raids
went on day after day.
Seoul was reduced to ruins.
Grass grew
between the broken bricks in the ruins.
South Korean troops
recaptured Seoul.
The Northern flag was lowered
from the flagstaff on the Government Building,
the American flag was raised,
followed by the South Korean flag,
and the two fluttered there.
Seoul was under martial law.
Curfew lasted from seven in the evening
until five the next morning,
the time for mice.
Checkpoints stood here and there
in the ruins.
The police who had come back
set about arresting those who had collaborated during the past three months,
even children under ten
The kid of the noodle bar in Juja-don
g in central Seoul,
got to know about this harsh world
from early on.
He got to know all about
the world with its beaters-up
and its beaten,
a world where there were thieves
amidst all that fear,
a world where even robbers
and thieves were arrested and beaten with clubs.
He was envious of robbers, envious of thieves.
North Korean Soldiers
North Korean soldiers
who drove south
of the 38th parallel
in the summer of 1950…
North Korean soldiers who supervised night operations on aerodromes.
North Korean soldiers never smoked a cigarette,
afraid of American airplanes:
‘The glow of a cigarette can be seen 5 kilometres away.’
They were sixteen,
seventeen years old.
They were carrying submachine guns as tall as themselves.
They had just been mobilised from remote villages.
They were naive,
very shy.
Boys like them were dumped out by the basketful
into the exorbitant war.
Choi Ik-hwan
Everyone was leaving
leaving in a hurry
southward, southward, fleeing refugees
on the 4 January Retreat in 1951,
all but one.
He who refused to leave
had the notion of stopping
this immense calamity,
with his two hands
at any cost
stopping
this war,
a war in which fellow-countrymen were killing one another
left and right
South and North.
Disorder
lawlessness
thieves
ransackers of empty houses
those who had an eye on refugees’ bundles
extortionists charged with arresting collaborators
who threatened you with jail
unless you gave up your valuables
absolute confusion
every kind of crime.
After such chaos,
by the end of December 1950
Seoul was utterly empty; everyone had left.
Except one:
Choi Ik-hwan.
Who refused to leave, saying
somehow or other
this brutal game of death must stop.
Choi Ik-hwan.
He remained in his small room
in a shabby house in Seongbuk-dong in Seoul and wouldn’t leave,
intending to meet the approaching Northern army
to bring about an end to the war
and persuade the leaders to stop the fighting.
Far from making for Busan
where all were fleeing,
he didn’t even head back toward his hometown in Hongseong.
Early in his life
he joined Son Byeong-hui’s Donghak,
and opened his eyes to the people.
Then he went to Shanghai
with Euichin, one of the last Korean princes,
and took charge of an Independence Movement group,
one known as Daedongdan.
After Liberation,
he was a member of the Democratic Assembly.
In January 1951 he did meet Northern officials
and risked his life negotiating a ceasefire.
Starving,
shivering with cold,
suffering from pleurisy,
he never left.
O Se-do the Trader
O Se-do, slightly pock-marked,
accumulated a fortune through brokerage,
all by himself, all of five-foot tall,
with no store,
no office.
Just how rich he was no one knew.
He was considered the richest man in Cheolwon,
the richest man in Pocheon,
in Yeoncheon.
But no one knew just how rich he was.
During the three years of war,
he raked in profits,
crossing the battlefields
to sell things in the North
and in the South,
while the central front repeatedly advanced and retreated,
one hill taken and re-taken
ninety-nine times.
Heavens! More fearful than warfare
were O Se-do’s business skills.
At times he dealt in war supplies,
so he had dealings with Yi Sang-jo in the North,
with Jeong Il-gwon in the South.
Sometimes he dealt in military intelligence,
sometimes he dealt with the American Eighth Army.
No one knew who he was.
He had a high-pitched voice,
a sixteen-year-old girl’s uvula.
Having a keen sense of smell
he was able to sniff out bean-sprout soup miles away.
A jeep he was riding
got blown up by a landmine.
He was seriously wounded
and taken to the 858 unit’s field hospital.
His belt was packed tight with $120,000.
Yeong-ho’s Sister
Today is another clear day and in his memory his sister is coming.
Today, too,
in his memory – all he has left –
his sister is coming.
Nine-year-old sister Yeong-seon
and five-year-old Yeong-ho,
the two came down to the South alone.
His sister died,
and Yeong-ho became a combat policeman.
He was ordered to go to Jiri Mountain,
and fought.
While fighting,
he suffered a head wound.
He lost his wits.
His only memory
is the coldest, hungriest, hottest instant
of this present time.
In his memory, all other presents
are dimmer.
He ran away from the hospital.
He stole onto a train and later got off unnoticed.
In the deserted plaza in front of Sintan-ri Station
he was looking for someone, gazing around.
He was looking for Yeong-seon, his sister,
his dead sister.
Yi Geuk-no
After the meeting of the Koryo Communist Party
in Irkutsk
he walked
and he walked,
across Mongolian grasslands,
through sandstorms,
as far as Shanghai in China,
he walked on,
starving.
He walked to attend a secret meeting in Shanghai.
The soles of his feet were black and numb.
So very ardent, entirely devoted to his lost nation.
Hyeon Gye-ok in Shanghai
In 1 941 the Shanghai public auditorium looked down on the yellowish river.
An international arts festival was being held:
China,
France,
England,
USSR,
Japan.
Inside the hall
each country’s flag was hanging.
Outside, too,
each country’s flag was fluttering.
Only the Taegeukgi,
the flag of Korea, nationhood lost,
was not there.
A young girl, Hyeon Gye-ok,
accompanied an independence fighter
from the French Concession.
As the art festival was ending,
although it was not in the programme,
she suddenly took to the stage
before the emcee could stop her.
After putting up the Taegeukgi,
she performed a gayageum solo.
Slow, with long breaths,
ar
dently.
The very rapid jajinmori rhythm was entrancing.
The hall sank under deep water.
Applause burst out.
One Chinese spectator wept as he said:
‘You have told people from the whole world
of your nation’s independence.’
Yi Seung-tae
He was arrested at age seventeen.
He was involved in a plot to blow up a police substation.
Part of the building was destroyed.
He was arrested
as he was making his escape.
After being tortured,
he spent one year in detention before being sent for trial.
His release as a minor was approved.
The detective in charge
ordered him to write in his letter of apology that
when he was released
he would be loyal to the Japanese Empire,
and to seal it with a thumbprint.
‘I am a Korean.
I have no duty to serve Japan.
‘Once I am out,
I shall fight for our people’s liberation
until Japan leaves our land.’
He continued:
‘Because of me, my father has become a cripple.
He was stuck in snow
and tortured